The Anxiety of Symmetry: “Just Right”

Repetition & Automatism in Music

There’s a way of thinking that’s sometimes called “Just Right.” It’s usually thought of as an unhealthy
kind of obsessiveness, which it certainly can be, but the feelings themselves are normal enough and
depending on the intensity, it’s really only a problem when it feels like a problem. Although it’s classified
as an anxiety disorder, it’s actually an anxiety ​about​ disorder, an overwhelming feeling that something is
somehow not quite right and almost always accompanied by an irresistible urge to address the problem.
Because of its involuntary nature, the sudden flood of feeling that precedes an episode — often called a
“premonitory urge” — is frequently compared to the impulse to sneeze or scratch, though it differs in that
the source of these feelings is perceived to be coming from outside the body. Most of the time, this is a
visual/spatial experience: for example, books or papers on a desk that are arranged in a way that feels
wrong, followed by an urgent compulsion to tidy them until they feel “right.” This almost always happens
in a loop; straightening things once isn’t enough and the cycle must be repeated with variations in
sequence, position and spacing until the feelings of disorder and incompleteness are resolved.

While compulsive variation in “Just Right” looping behaviors is typical, variation isn’t always a condition
for resolution. Sometimes repetition can be an end in itself, though in such cases perhaps “repetition” isn’t
quite the right word. Gertrude Stein claimed, when speaking of her own famously repetitive work, “There
is no such thing as repetition. Only insistence.” Similarly for the “Just Right” subject, each iteration of the
compulsive loop carries its own unique emotional signature (even if nothing has changed) and the
accumulation of loops produce satisfying feelings of repleteness, as instances overlap and the memory of
previous iterations create interference patterns overlaid with the present until the tension dissipates. This
repetition for its own sake is part of the peculiar automatism of “Just Right” behavior. The insistent
ritualistic behaviors seem (and are) mechanistic, but the subject remains fully aware of the “normal” way
to act and knows that nothing external prevents them from doing so, but is ultimately forced to obey their
inner compulsions, engaging — almost in the manner of certain surrealists — in a kind of willed
automatism.

Singing Seizures

Not only a visual spatial experience, “Just Right” perceptions can occur in the auditory/temporal realm as
well: imagine a musician who plays a series of notes that feels to them somehow out of balance and
they’re compelled to repeat the sequence with tiny variations in order, timing and tempo until the feelings
of tension are resolved. Note that this is unlike the normal sort of “noodling” a musician might engage in
while warming up; for our “Just Right” musician, looping over this sequence is the primary activity, both
a kind of therapeutic arena in which to exercise feelings of anxiety and control and a very personal and
specific act of musical automatism.

The individual sounds themselves can also be the focus of these feelings. A cadence, a chord, a single
note or even some specific attribute of the sound — tuning, attack, decay, etc — that somehow seems
“off” can trigger an episode of looping in search of resolution. And although the term “resolution” as I’m
using it here is not the same as that described by traditional music theory (the movement from dissonance
to consonance), it can, in such a performance, play the same role psychologically and structurally.
Admittedly the listener will lack access to the performer’s internal understanding of the music and the
“Just Right” feelings that give it form, but the opaqueness of a work’s underlying structure to the casual
observer is a common feature shared by much experimental music.

Not surprisingly, as we’ve seen given its parallels to music, the core features of “Just Right” thinking —
repetition, theme and variation, tension and release — are also fundamental musical concepts. Is this
overlap of concerns a simple coincidence or is there some deeper connection between the two? Can the
feelings themselves be exercised constructively through composition or improvisation? For the electronic
musician, is it possible to mediate the automatism of “Just Right” repetitions via the computer?

Anxious Symmetry

One aspect of this kind of thinking is symmetry, either spatially through the reflected repetition of
elements around an axis or temporally through the reverse recapitulation of a sequence in time. For the
“Just Right” subject, once an obsessive urge establishes symmetry as the condition for its resolution, it
becomes a structuring principle for everything: ​Were you perfectly centered as you walked through the
doorway? Better go back and try it again. Did that work? Not sure? Keep trying until it feels right. Drink
coffee with your right hand? Next sip should be with your left (and don’t forget to keep alternating).​ Not
always spatial, sometimes these compulsions require reversing a sequence in time, for example retracing
one's steps when returning home so the same route is followed in reverse.

The relationship with symmetry is never easy though, as the subject’s perception of it is neither literal nor
stable. It’s never as simple as copy/paste/invert; as we’ve seen, each iteration of the loop is unique and the
approach to and retreat from the symmetrically mirrored image are constrained by both the external logic
of the situation and the internal consciousness of the individual, advanced by both an uneasy desire for
symmetry’s violation and the anxious anticipation of its return.

This use of symmetry to organize experience is also shared by music, though the terms will be different:
“retrograde” is traditional musicology’s name for a musical phrase repeated in reverse, creating a
symmetrical form; for our “Just Right” thinker inverting an action in order to achieve a sense of balance
might be called “evening up.” In the context of music composition and improvisation, of course, there are
many opportunities for “evening up”: the composer/performer seeking to interact constructively with their
idée fixe can increment or decrement one side of a symmetric axis, then in the next iteration of the loop
repeat the action on the opposite side, directing their own internal experience of tension and release by
purposefully breaking and reestablishing symmetry. For the “Just Right” subject, this possibility to
manipulate symmetry, to willfully create & destroy the object of a compulsion is therapeutic, a version of
Freud’s fort-da repetition automatism transposed to the realm of sound.

The manipulation of symmetry in music can have a vertical dimension as well. Loops can be layered and
retrograde forms can happen independently in separate voices, creating new densities with compelling
opportunities for the symmetrically fixated: the superimposition of the retrograde over its original version,
unstable alignments employing parallel polymeters, phasing through modulating tempi and all manner of
hidden easter egg arrangements known only to the composer.

Machine Mediated Mania

For the “Just Right” subject composing or performing with the computer, the fixation with repetition,
symmetry and arrangement in sound can be mediated with software, creating new prospects for both
therapeutic engagement with their compulsions and the creation of music with a length, density and scale
not possible without machines. Looping over a sequence and manipulating the elements of an array are
things that computers do very well. Loops can be stacked and superimposed in time; variations created as
their contents are shuffled, sorted, transposed, incremented/decremented, inverted, retrograded,
randomized, etc. These operations can be algorithmic (according to rules devised by the composer) or
improvised manually at run time. They can be done by ear, and/or visually, using some sort of external
controller to expose and map the state of the system, expressing parameter values and arrangement as a
graph.

The materials themselves can be scaled to whatever size seems most satisfying, either horizontally or
vertically. The scaling is dynamic during the performance and creates the ability to “zoom” in or out on a
specific area where the subject perceives “tension” by expanding or shrinking the length of the melodic
sequence. Similarly chord voicings can be grown or shrunk vertically in ways to address any number of
symmetrical compulsions. And should the computer make these sorts of interactions too “easy” to be
engaging for the “Just Right” subject, AI makes it possible to create an artificial opponent capable of
resisting or subverting the user’s actions, creating a kind of compulsive chess match with an adversary
who keeps rearranging the board.

Offloading one’s “Just Right” auditory compulsions onto the computer fulfills the promise of automatic
art, allowing the full expression of the subconscious by removing the need to focus on anything but the
arrangement and rearrangement of elements, and the sounds themselves become merely a byproduct of
the process of satisfying these feelings. Whether compulsively looping over the arrangement of books on
a shelf or aligning and realigning layered loops of sound, the ultimate effect for the performer is to bypass
consciousness and stop time.